


Blood and Water

by imachar



Series: The Weight of a Man [4]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Horror, M/M, Mission Fic, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:46:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imachar/pseuds/imachar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil and Chris are just getting used to being stationed on the same ship; then Phil is sent off to deal with a crisis on an asteroid mining station. If he and his team can't contain the problem, Chris might just have to execute General Order 35.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Water

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd as always by the ever obliging and perpetually insightful **Zauzat**

**Blood and Water**

"I don't like this." There's a low, mutinous burn in Chris's voice and Phil looks up from his packing, one eyebrow raised at the sight of the Yorktown's captain sitting in the middle of their disordered bed, naked but for the sheet draped over his lap, his hair a mess from their recently concluded just-about-to-be-separated farewell fuck. 

There's something inordinately attractive about a bed-ruffled-irate Chris but they are on a tight schedule and, as tempting as it is to throw the remains of his clothes into the duffle and go back to bed for another round, he doesn't have the time, so Phil just shrugs and quirks a wry grin, "Pretty sure Starfleet couldn't give a fuck about whether you like the orders that come down from Command." And then he goes back to sliding neatly folded undershirts and uniform pants into his luggage. 

Chris stretches, long muscles tense and corded under space-pale skin and then leans forward to hug his knees, insubordination still lingering in his tone as he grouses."Yeah, I know; but I don't think they have a clue what's really going on out at that mining station, they should be cutting orders for the entire ship to go investigate, not making me send you off in a shuttle with half a dozen marines for back up."

Phil's not very happy about it either, but orders are orders and he long ago learned to save his moments of rebellion for times when he actually knows what the fuck is going on. Nonetheless he pauses as he throws his traveling wash-kit in after the clothes and then closes the seal on the travel bag, banishing the slightly edgy sense that Chris is right, before he declares, his voice steady and so very reasonable, "You've got diplomats to deliver and anyway, even sending marines is overkill; it's just a bad batch of stims, not a fucking Klingon invasion."

"You really think so? You really think that guy was sweating like that just because a few miners are having a bad reaction to their happy-pills?" 

Phil thinks about that for a moment, the guy had certainly looked damned uncomfortable when the Yorktown had received the station's emergency request in the early hours of gamma-watch; but then, having to admit to Starfleet that the company was allowing their employees to use illegal performance enhancement drugs probably wasn't high on the station administrator's list of preferred daily activities. He says as much to Chris, who shrugs reluctantly and shakes his head before he throws back the sheet and levers himself off the bunk. 

Phil is momentarily distracted by long, lean naked starship captain, before Chris steps into the uniform pants that he'd discarded a scant thirty minutes before and then pulls them up over his bare ass, before objecting once more. "No, I think there's something else going down on that station that was scaring the fuck out of him. And that's why I'm sending marines with you. I don't trust these civilian station managers at the best of times and that guy sure as fuck didn't look like he was going through _the best of times_." He picks up the creased black undershirt from the deck and then, as if he's run out of steam --his anger dissolving into a vaguely uneasy fear -- he sits back down on the edge of the bunk and twists the shirt in his hands. 

Leaving his packing Phil goes back across the room to sit with Chris, sliding his long fingers over the bare chest, his hand coming to rest over a steadily beating heart, relishing the warm skin and rough brush of chest hair under his palm. "It'll be okay, and you need to chill, Chris." He hesitates before he goes on, his tone kinder than his words. "I've only been on board for eight weeks and this is the second time you've pitched a fit about my mission orders. You can't keep doing this. You really want the Admiral to be right? You really want to have to admit that fucking your CMO is a bad idea?" 

It's a low blow, bringing Joshua Pike into the conversation, reminding Chris of the furious argument he'd had with his father when he'd first submitted the request to take Phil as the Yorktown's CMO. A request that openly defied Josh's old-school conviction that Starfleet's recent decision to permit relationships between senior command crew was ill-considered and dangerous. It's also a rather risky conversational gambit for Phil, given that he'd had to endure a long, stern lecture from the Admiral on how seriously this relationship could imperil Chris's career and, if he really did care for Chris that much, maybe he should consider turning down the posting to the Yorktown. Polite during the discussion, Phil had been incandescent with rage afterwards, but still controlled enough not to mention it to Chris, unwilling to contribute any ammunition to the ongoing guerrilla war between father and son. Still, in some deep recess of his subconscious he knows that the old man might be right, that this could all blow up in their faces with profoundly damaging effects on _both_ their careers. 

Chris flinches, his eyes cast down, as the truth of Phil's words come home to him and he protests "It's not just fucking."

Yep, no potential for disaster here at all, they are both so fucked if this falls apart. 

"No shit, and I know that doesn't make it any easier, but you've got to learn to let go so I can do my job, or we're not going to be able to do this." Even as he says the words he knows he doesn't really mean them; utterly sure that there is no way that he could give this up now that they're finally on the same ship. Already so thoroughly entwined in each other's lives and hearts that separation is unthinkable. Hesitating, Phil softens his voice. "Chris, I'm not saying you don't get to feel the fear; every time you go dirt-side my heart stops until you're safe back on board; but you've got to find a way to deal with it. You've got to, or we'll drive each other insane." 

There's a long moment of silence and Phil feels the quiet sigh of resignation as Chris grudgingly acknowledges the truth of his words and for the briefest moment he leans in, rubbing his head against Phil's shoulder, face hidden as he whispers, reluctance thick in his voice. "I know, but I love you. I'm not sure I realized what that was going to be like once I had to send you into harm's way."

His heart tripping slightly at the admission of love, still so rarely acknowledged out loud, Phil curls his hand around the back of Chris's neck and holds him close. Breathing in the warm, damp smell of him, the faint musk of sweat and sex clinging to skin still slightly flushed with the aftermath of a fast, intense orgasm. He grips tight for a few seconds before the reality of his imminent departure steels his nerve and he whispers in a voice sharp with frustration and just a hint of fear. "Yeah? Well think of it as payback for all the times you do stupid shit and I have to put you back together." 

Pragmatic to a fault, Phil still can't quite dispel the irrational sense that Chris might be right, that they might be getting into something bigger than some mismanaged stimulant-distribution. Something more complex, more alien, than just a minor stim-batch contamination that is proving to be more than the station's, no-doubt understaffed, medical facility can handle. 

But he can't let his imagination go there, and he certainly can't let Chris see his disquiet; can't risk him compromising the Yorktown's current mission if he thinks Phil is in any way unsure about leading his away team off to the station alone. With a last visceral shiver he lets himself feel the solid heat of the body in his arms for a few more seconds and then, banishing the thought that he's somehow letting go of Chris for the last time, he forces himself to loosen his grip. 

There's work to be done. 

Phil has just two hours to prep his medical team for a departure that will have to be timed to the minute to capitalize on the Yorktown's wide, Warp-7 off-course swing that will drop their shuttle as close as feasible to the Beria, Nakano and Chin mining station that is currently exploiting the rare mineral deposits on one of the asteroids at the far edge of the 7785 Cygni system. It's the back of fucking beyond, far outside the normal patrol routes for a Federation starship. But, since the Yorktown is on her way to New Thyoph which is also in the back of fucking beyond -- if three light years away from 7785 Cygni -- Command has determined that they are the closest thing that BNC 334 will get to Federation assistance. 

*****

  
This really is the ass-end of nowhere.

Phil doesn't quite fathom how far they are from any form of civilization until the shuttle passes beyond the last Federation communications relay station and the young shuttle pilot reaches up to the comm panel above his head and turns on the emergency-only channels, their steady amber lights a reminder that they are in a restricted-communications zone. Out here, on the edge of Federation space, the official Starfleet communication bandwidth is narrowed down to two emergency-only channels supplemented by a handful of commercial relay links; any communications from now on are restricted to bare-bones information and old-style sub-warp message packets which can be bounced from one commercial freighter to another until they finally make their way back into the Federation communications network. Suddenly, space feels immeasurably vast, and the Yorktown dauntingly far away. It's an uncomfortable sensation and Phil can see the tension in his companions as they contemplate two more days of cramped, slightly claustrophobic, travel without even the distraction of Starfleet's webnet to keep them entertained. 

In an attempt to keep himself occupied Phil turns to his backlog of medical journals, looking for the most current research on stimulant reactions and possible treatment options, as always, using work to keep his mind from wandering to thoughts of Chris. Wondering whether he's stopped sleeping now that they can't check in every few hours; whether his caffeine intake and temper are beginning to reflect his rising anxiety. 

If Phil's honest -- if they are both honest -- the decision for Phil to replace Stefan Corvinus as the Yorktown's CMO wasn't the most deeply thought-out move of either of their careers. Offered on the spur of a post-coital moment, and accepted with barely any hesitation on Phil's part, they're both now in the process of figuring out how to live with each other in the high-tension, emotionally super-charged world of deep-space service. Learning how to share space, to communicate, to work and live and fuck and fight together in 21 square meters of captain's living quarters; all while trying to come to terms with the knowledge that in the space of heart beat either one or both of them could be lost to any one of the myriad dangers that bedevils Starfleet service in the black.

It's a sobering, ever-present, niggle at the back of Phil's mind, that all the years of intensely passionate short-lived encounters -- and all the years of mind-warpingly great sex-- won't be enough to hold them together through the stress and tension of serving together every day. Depressed by the thought that Joshua Pike might just be right; that perhaps active duty in the black isn't the best place to conduct an intimate relationship, Phil lays down his padd, it's screen gone black from inattention, and goes in search of coffee and an update on their ETA.

The asteroid belt that contains their destination, inhabits the far edges of an M9V Red dwarf system, a huge oblate disc moving in a slow balletic arc around the distant star and the asteroid itself 2012FJ16, is one of the largest bodies in the cluster. An irregular, inelegant, lump of gray rock and ice, it dominates the view screen of the shuttle as they pull away from the outermost planet in the system and begin the approach. 

Held in a rough orbital stasis by the opposing gravitational pull of two huge ice-bound planets, orbiting the distant sun, the belt is far out in the dark, uninhabitable zone of the solar system. Far enough from the dying star that the light from the red dwarf is a dull fuzzy pinprick in the upper starboard quarter of the shuttle's view screen. Much more visible is the string of lights and reflections from the mining station that clings to the asteroid looming out of the darkness as the young pilot responds to whatever he's hearing in his communication earpiece. And fuck isn't he young; one of the drawbacks of active starship duty for Phil is the realization that he's the same age as the parents of most of these children. 

Slowly the shuttle swings round into a shallow arc until they are on a trajectory that will bring them into the station's main shuttle bay and, fascinated by the engineering that permits stations like this to exist so far from any center of human habitation, Phil watches intently as they approach the elongated structure fastened to the side of the rock face. A nine-story platform, anchored by massive cables, that sits in a relatively smooth and obviously artificial indentation that has been blasted into the rock. Below it runs a hundred meters of vertical shaft, with cross shafts that penetrate the rock every twenty meters, each one big enough to accommodate the men and machines tasked with extracting the rich store of rare minerals that form the core of this primordial spacefaring giant. 

And then there's a whisper of static and Ensign Esawaran frowns as the voice in his ear imparts another instruction. With a curt affirmative he begins to change course, fingers flying rapidly over the flight controls and then, as if he's only just remembered he has passengers on board, he orders. "Flight seats everyone, please. This is going to be a little tricky."

The shuttle stalls for a moment and everyone in the passenger compartment scrambles for their flight-seats and restraint webbing before the short, snub-nosed little craft begins to climb the face of the station. 

"Why aren't we landing in the main shuttle bay?" Master Sergeant Nokothula Gauteng is a twenty-five year Fleet veteran with a voice like a tractor on crushed gravel and an unblemished reputation for making sure everyone in her charge makes it back to the Yorktown intact. Phil hadn't been at all surprised when he'd found that she was the senior security officer on the mission, one of the few ways Chris can exert a little control over Phil's safety in his absence and, from the wry smile and roll of her eyes when they'd met up in the shuttle bay before departure, she hadn't been surprised either. 

"Don't know, Sergeant. They want us to dock at the admin level exterior docking port." The pilot turns his head for a second and frowns at Gauteng. "It's not best practice. That docking station is only for emergencies, it's a lot less secure than using a shuttle bay." There's a shake in Esawaran's voice and Phil can hear the hesitancy in it, the edgy note of uncertainty that hints he's not sure he can pull-off the maneuver, even as he turns back to his controls. 

Sharing a small smile with Gauteng, Phil speaks to the back of the young man's head. "Don't worry about it, ensign. It'll be fine." 

And in truth Phil is much less worried about Esawaran's ability to successfully marry the shuttle to the docking ring on the top of the station than he is about why they have been diverted away from the much safer option of the shuttle bay. 

"Ensign, request clarification."

"Aye, sir." Esawaran repeats Phil's question, and then shrugs fractionally at the response in his earpiece. "They're saying there's a mechanical fault in the bay doors, can't get them open."

And then there's no more time to contemplate what-ifs, as Esawaran switches to thrusters and eases the shuttle forward and up until it nudges up against the rounded bulk of the station's primary hull with a shuddering thump. A moment later the metallic snap of grappling tethers signals that the shuttlecraft is secure and with a grind of metal-on-metal the docking conduit rotates and clicks into place.

"USS Yorktown shuttle 1717-Alpha-four secured; requesting permission to board." 

Esawaran removes his earpiece and the reply echoes though the confined space of the forward passenger cabin. "Permission granted, Yorktown shuttle, please discharge your passengers and then stand off."

Phil frowns even as Gauteng is shaking her head and indicating that Esawaran should cut the connection.

"Not happy about having the shuttle stand-off, Commander." 

Phil's not happy about it either, especially with the shuttle bay off-limits, if they have to withdraw in a hurry it's going to be all the more complicated if the shuttle has to re-dock with the station. It makes him nervous, the idea that his team will be isolated, without even the security of a rapid evacuation. "Nor I, Master Sergeant. Ensign, thoughts?"

"I think I have to stand-off, sir. These docking ports are pretty fragile, they aren't made to take the strain of a connection for more than a few hours."

Phil still doesn't like it and, judging by the grim set of her mouth, Gauteng doesn't either, but Esawaran clearly knows what he's doing and Phil capitulates. "Okay, Ensign; stand off until further notice, just be ready to come running if we call you." And Phil gestures for him to reestablish the communications link. 

*****

The young woman sent to meet them smiles, tense and brittle, as Phil steps out of the docking conduit and when he takes her hand he can feel the tension in her grip, the tremble of nerves that speak of too much caffeine and too little sleep. Stepping to the side to let the rest of the team follow him out onto the deck he firms his grasp on her fingers, trying to impart a little confidence as he greets her. "Phil Boyce, Yorktown CMO, thank you for meeting us."

"Thanks for coming." Her smile eases slightly as she introduces herself as the station's chief med-tech and then admits, "We really need help with this." She gestures towards the door. "Let me take you to Chief Administrator Forrest's office. He's waiting for you with our Security chief." She pauses and turns to the rest of the company. "If you go left out of here and follow the red line on the floor it'll take you to the mess hall on this level, the visitors' quarters are on the outer wall." She looks faintly apologetic for a moment. "Sorry, you're going to have to double up, we don't usually have to accommodate this many people."

As they look to him for direction Phil nods and orders, "Gauteng, Chatterjee with me; the rest of you go eat and freshen up while we figure out what's going on here." 

The sound of the docking clamps releasing gives all of them a moment's pause, the faint thump of the shuttlecraft disengaging sending a visceral little shiver up Phil's spine and Gauteng frowns until Phil forces a brief, wry smile and a fractional tip of his head. "Let's go deal with this."

"Where's your CMO?" Phil falls into step beside the short, nervous med-tech as they head into the warren of worn and grimy passageways that make up the upper levels of the station and, as preoccupied as he is with trying to identify the myriad of faintly unpleasant odors that seem to be seeping out of the very walls of the station, he narrows his gaze and frowns when she visibly shudders at the question. Not breaking stride she shakes herself and deflects his question. "I'm not at liberty to answer that, Commander. Sorry, you'll have to wait until we get to the office." 

Well, fuck, that's not helpful; irritated at her obfuscation Phil's frown deepens, but he restrains his natural inclination to snap a sharp retort, grudgingly impressed at her backbone as she just stares back at him, apparently unfazed by his annoyance. 

*****

  
Cal Forrest is a stocky, bald, bull of a man, too big for the desk behind which he's corralled. Flushed and sweating in shirt sleeves and a pair of company issue work pants -- the entwined BNC of the logo clearly visible on the waistband -- the sight of him, more than anything else, convinces Phil that whatever is going on is more complicated than a simple bad reaction to stimulants. He stands as Phil enters the office and his hand-shake is damp and trembling. "Commander, glad Starfleet could spare you."

It might be his imagination but Phil's pretty sure he can hear a note of sarcasm buried not too deep beneath the surface of the CA's words and he resists the urge to roll his eyes; the Federation might require Starfleet to come to the aid of civilian commercial stations, but neither side really likes the arrangement. "We got here as fast as we could, so would you like to explain why I'm not talking to your CMO, I assume a station this size has one?" It's probably not a good idea to antagonize the already over-stressed Forrest, but Phil can't help himself, the sense that someone -- probably this man behind the desk -- hasn't been entirely forthcoming about the magnitude of the problem.

"Doctor Neret is among the affected. He's..." Forrest's pause is ominous, and he slumps back into his chair, all the aggression gone from his voice, replaced with a thin layer of sorrow over deep-seated fear. "...He's in the deep-quarantine section, with all the others that have symptoms." 

"Deep-quarantine?" The words send a flush of cold fear surging through Phil -- nobody quarantines patients who've had a bad reaction to stimulants -- and as all his senses sharpen with the surge of adrenaline the question of that smell in the passageways resolves itself -- death; the station smells of death. Phil takes a slow, steadying breath; goddammit Chris was right, there is something very wrong here and the horrified panic in Forrest's eyes makes Phil's stomach clench in sympathetic dread. 

"We can't risk the..." Forrest pauses and holds up his hands in a gesture of futility as he searches for a word "...I don't know what the fuck to call them...the contaminated...getting to the rest of the station so as soon as someone shows symptoms we've been shipping them down to Beta Level Three, the lowest dormitory level. Everyone else who might have been infected is confined to Beta One and Two, the other dormitory decks." 

Forrest waves a hand and gestures to the other occupant of the room. "Security Chief Campbell and I; we determined it was too risky to have the infected on the admin levels."

"Getting to the rest of the station? So they're mobile when they're symptomatic."

"More than mobile; unstoppable, and lethal." The other occupant of the room is considerably less contentious than Forrest; a tall, graying, rail-thin woman with worried eyes and the face of someone who's seen things they'd rather forget. Phil knows that look, he's seen the aftermath of entirely too many fire-fights and natural disasters to ever mistake that look of deeply entrenched horror in the eyes of the survivors. Still, when she holds out her hand, her grip is firm and confident and Phil gets the sense that this woman has a core of iron. 

"Security Chief Ellen Campbell."

"Chief, you want to explain what the hell is going on? We were brought in to deal with a bad drug reaction, not an infection."

She glances across to Forrest who once again pushes himself away from his desk and gestures to the wall screen flickering with news feeds. "Ellen, bring up the security feeds while I brief the Commander." He waves Phil to a seat and swings around on his chair so that he can talk to Phil and watch the screen at the same time. 

"About five days ago, we had three miners appear in sickbay with fairly standard drug reaction symptoms, fever, sweats, headache, muscle aches. Neret did a routine work up on them and couldn't find an immediate cause, but he figured they'd probably just had a bad stim reaction; we'd just opened a new batch from stores. " 

Phil frowns at that and interrupts, "Where do your stim supplies come from?" 

Forrest just shrugs as he admits "Corporate provides them, we have an in-house manufacturing facility. Stims are part of the ration supply for the miners, just like the other recreational drugs we provide for down time. That way we control the quality." 

"Yeah, and how much do you take out of their credit account at the end of the month." Phil winces as he realizes that's a thought that should probably have been kept to himself and carries on, gesturing impatiently, before Forrest can respond. "So, what happened after Neret released them?"

"About forty-eight hours later one of them seemed to have a psychotic break, he went berserk, took a hydraulic chisel and killed the hooker he was with." 

"Sex-worker Carl, you know better than that." Campbell's admonition is gently delivered, but it's clear that this isn't a new conversation and it doesn't improve Phil's opinion of the Chief Administrator any. 

"Neret didn't think the breakdown was necessarily related to the stim reaction, so we locked him in the brig and sent in a request for a prisoner transport. When a couple more guys came down with fever symptoms we transmitted the request for Federation support." Forrest pauses for emphasis. "When we sent out that call, all we'd had was five guys with an unknown fever and one homicidal episode that we didn't know was related. We really did think it was all related to the last batch of stims. If we'd known what this was going to turn into we'd have requested a full Federation response." 

Apprehension blooms into full-blown alarm and Phil looks from Forrest to Campbell and back again before he asks "What has it turned into?"

For a long moment Forrest is quiet, just staring at the view screen, and Phil contains his impatience, watching as Campbell navigates the security surveillance archive, pulling up selected files until there are five red-flagged icons blinking in the corner of the screen. The silence is so profound that Phil starts slightly when Forrest picks up the story, his voice thick with regret and horror. "Right after we sent the distress call we had a second incident. Another one of the initial patients went homicidally insane. He was in a drop-lift on his way to the Lambda three shaft; that's our lowest level, it's a fifteen minute drop. By the time they opened the doors he was in the corner of the lift-cage surrounded by body parts, trying to rip off his own EVA suit. One of the guys who was on his way off shift put him down with a hydraulic bolt gun." 

Forrest shudders and for the first time Phil feels a stir of sympathy for him. "Anyway, the shift boss held everyone at the face and called it in as a crime scene." Thick, short fingered hands rub through his hair and Forrest shakes himself, "At that point we knew there was something bad going down and Neret doubled down on the analysis. It's not the stims; it's some kind of infection." Pausing to take a swallow of what looks like cold coffee, Forrest coughs and then goes on. "We immediately used the dormitory levels to quarantine anyone who'd had the slightest chance of exposure." 

Forrest raises his head, his eyes dark wells of miserable regret and fear, as he holds Phil's gaze and sighs out a slow, reluctant breath. "That was two and a half days ago. Neret went down with his team and they've been separating people out as they become symptomatic, using the shift bosses to keep order. He went down to Beta Three to help bring up everyone who was asymptomatic, and started a fever last night so he's staying down there."

Phil can feel the headache building behind his eyes as he contemplates the clusterfuck they are facing and he can't keep the sarcasm out of his voice as he asks. "And how's the quarantine been working out?"

Forrest shudders again and waves a hand, indicating that Campbell should start the playback of the security feeds. "Just, watch..."

The first short excerpt is from the video feed in the passageway outside one of the private rooms the miners use for "personal time" and Phil jumps at the sudden sound of high-pitched screaming, muffled through the layers of sound-proofing that lines the corridor walls, but horrifying in it's sustained intensity. It is the sound of someone dying in pain and terror. And then, just as the security team arrives the wall shudders and the scream stops with a terrifying finality. When they override the lock, the door slides open to reveal crimson-splashed walls and floor, a crumpled body in one corner and a naked blood-daubed miner, eyes wild as he brandishes a bloody, still vibrating, hydro-chisel.

Even as he watches the footage Phil can understand why the station's CMO might have thought he was dealing with an unrelated psychotic incident, there's nothing here that immediately signals the second stage of any kind of viral or bacterial infection that he's familiar with. 

The second clip is the aftermath of the drop-lift massacre, footage from the security recorders on the Lambda-level shaft looking into the lift-cage as the doors fold open; the stomach-churning sight of blood and brain and viscera splattered across the walls and floor; another frantic, incoherent assailant ripping at his EVA suit; a moment of sustained silent horror when the waiting miners realize what they're seeing. And then the unearthly sound of rage from the lift-cage as the homicidal man begins to advance until the shift boss reacts, drawing his hydraulic bolt-gun like an old western sheriff, stopping the man in his tracks with a single 2cm bolt to the forehead. More brain and blood in the lift-cage and Phil shudders, swallowing hard as his gorge rises.

With each of the three remaining surveillance clips the horror intensifies. Four food service workers trapped in the kitchens, butchered with a hand operated reciprocating saw wielded by a single man, leant inhuman strength by the disease burning through his bloodstream. The sound of screams in the dark as unseen victims are caught at one of the active mining faces, an explosion and fire and then silence. And then the carnage in a drop-lift as three, still apparently unaffected, miners, try to make their escape into the mine shafts, pursued by a demon with a fire ax; the aftermath a tangle of bent and broken limbs, the wall of the drop-lift painted with more blood than could possibly have come from the ruined bodies on the floor. The sight of it sends an unaccustomed thrill of horror up Phil's spine, there is something so wrong about the scene that he turns to Chatterjee and Gauteng, both transfixed by the frozen image on the wall screen. "What am I seeing? Why does this look wrong? Any ideas?"

It takes a long moment for the three of them to figure out exactly what is so sinister about the blood that adorns the walls of the lift to the lowest level of the facility. Phil's a surgeon by trade, blood, deep red and abundant, is an integral part of his life and work; but this is _wrong_ on some very deep and visceral level and he stares at the walls for long, silent seconds until the sound of a stifled, horrified intake of breath from Chatterjee makes him start, and then he sees the flicker of motion and realizes that the blood is moving _up_ the walls. The movement is almost imperceptible, so slow that it's only noticeable when he's not looking directly at it and, in the nauseating, skin-crawling moments when Phil is transfixed with the sheer wrongness of what he's seeing, he understands that this is no simple virus. This is something entirely unfamiliar.

"Yeah, we noticed that too." Campbell gestures to turn off the playback and the screen reverts to news feeds and intra-company information streams. 

"And yet, you didn't send out a second distress call." Cutting sarcasm is Phil's stock in trade when he's so angry he can barely see straight. 

Forrest shakes his head, one hand gripping his thigh, the other tapping out a nervous tattoo on the desk-top. "Corporate got involved, we're still waiting for them to get back to us with authorization to call in a general Federation response." 

This, _this_ is exactly why Phil has no time for the culture of conservative ass-covering that infects the Federation's corporate sector. "Just as well..." he pauses to give himself a moment to restrain his natural inclination to lace what he's about to say with profanity. Phil's been disciplined for violating regulation 256.15 regarding professional behavior in the past, he needs to keep his tone and his language in check "...I don't need "corporate" permission to act, then isn't it." Steady and low and cold as ice, Phil is at his most dangerous; rage at the stupidity of multilevel bureaucracy and it's glacial decision making pace warring with contempt for Forrest's craven attempt to preserve his job by not acting alone. And, with a contemptuous curl of his lip, he turns away from the CA and pulls out his communicator. 

"Ensign Esawaran I need you to send a level one priority distress signal to Starfleet Command, notification codes for unknown infectious disease, a 7/10 quarantine code for non-responding vessels and..." He passes again, not quite sure how to describe the security situation, "...a 6/16 for armed unrest. Then send a direct message to the Yorktown, she's probably the only ship in the sector that'll do us any good. And Ensign, continue to stand off, all orders from now on are subject to regulation 27/6." The last command ensures that Esawaran is only obligated to follow orders from Phil, Gauteng or a designated subordinate with appropriate security codes. 

"Okay, Master Sergeant, go get some food. Then set up three security details, once we've got a tricorder profile for the infectious agent we can go down into the dormitory levels and start separating out the uninfected from those that are just asymptomatic." 

"Aye, sir." The tall, Xhosa woman swings around and, with a sharp snap of her boots on the deck, heads out of the office. Continuing to ignore the two station officials Phil considers the grave-faced med-tech at his side. "Banat, find the sick bay and start setting up a lab. Get Tarrant and Huang to help you. We need to get blood samples, get them analyzed so we know what we're looking for and set up a tricorder profile so we can screen for infection."

"Sir." She nods, a terse, economical gesture softened by the brief smile that animates her dark eyes. "I'll bring you some coffee and see if there's any decent hot food in the mess."

Phil has no idea of the last time he ate and the mention of food reminds him that he's starving, he nods his thanks to Chatterjee, "I'll be down as soon as we're finished here." 

When he turns back to Forrest and Campbell he leans against the bulkhead and crosses one leg over the other, consciously trying to dial down his aggression, aware that anger, however justified he thinks it is, is not going to make the process of figuring out how the station came into contact with this disease any easier. 

"Okay, so where did this come from? What do we know about it?" The more Phil knows about the possible origin of the pathogen the easier it will be to figure out exactly what it is when he starts the lab work.

Looking just a little shifty Forrest shrugs. "We don't really know. We've screened all the food and beverage supplies that came in on last week's transports. There is nothing out of the ordinary and, anyway, we're all eating the same basic ration supply and no one in the Alpha levels has been infected."

Phil really does have the sense that Forrest is trying to avoid telling him something, but he lets it pass, trying to stay focused on the task at hand. "Okay, when this first appeared, what else was going on?"

There's another moment of uncomfortable silence as Forrest shuffles in his seat and Phil can hear Campbell clearing her throat behind him, preparing to speak until she's silenced by a glare from her boss. And now Phil has had enough, "Just fuc..., just tell me, if you have any suspicions at all about where this is coming from we need to know now."

The CA seems to shrink in his chair, shoulders sagging as he admits. "The water supply; this started right after we punched through into a new water source."

Phil takes a moment to think about that. Water is a scarce resource in space and it's an expensive proposition to keep starships and starbases and commercial stations supplied with safe and relatively abundant potable water. But exploiting local water supplies rarely figures into the equation, because it's risky, very risky, given the probability of finding something unexpected and completely unfamiliar living in it. Pinching the bridge of his nose to try to beat back the headache that's building behind his eyes, Phil grits his teeth and grinds out a frustrated question. "You get your water from the asteroid?"

"Yeah, these things are full of ice pockets and recycle units are expensive; it's cheaper to just open up the ice pocket, put a pipe into it and bleed off the excess heat from the drilling to melt us a water supply. We filter it, of course, but..." 

Forrest pauses, wilting in the face of Phil's rising anger as he interrupts. "You filter it for biologicals and pathogens that we know about, how the hell can you filter for something you're never seen before. You don't test it before you start drinking it? You know, just in case there's something unfamiliar in it, something _alien_?"

"We irradiate the hell out of it, that should kill any biological contaminant."

"This thing has stayed alive on an asteroid for heaven-knows how long; clearly it can survive all kinds of hard radiation." Phil takes a breath, struggling to get his anger under control, no matter how much he might deserve it, going off on Forrest is not going to solve anything. "Okay, so why has this only appeared in the lower levels? Why is no-one up here affected?"

Now Forrest really does look uncomfortable as he has to admit. "We have a recycle unit that serves Alpha Level; it's only the mining levels that use the asteroid water."

Phil flushes hot and cold with rage and pushes himself away from the wall, temper on a razor-fine edge as he exercises iron control over his tongue, "So you are aware that it's risky, it's just a risk you're happy to pass on to your miners. Goddamit, how many people are down there?"

"Three hundred and twenty miners, fifty or so support staff and..." He pauses and pulls up a file on one of his pads, "...thirty visitors."

"Visitors?"

There's another pause, this one embarrassed, before Forrest goes on, his voice subdued. "There's a couple of corporate safety inspectors on board and ...twenty-eight sex workers came in on the last supply shuttle."

Phil should be appalled at the apparently callous way the station permits sex-workers to operate, but he's not surprised by it, providing easy access to sex is probably one way to keep those three hundred and twenty miners pacified and productive. 

"Okay, we need to continue to evacuate anyone who's not symptomatic from the lowest levels and seal off the people who are already contaminated. Then we can screen the rest and bring them up to this level as we clear them."

"What about those that are already infected?"

"I doubt we have the resources here to thoroughly analyze this thing, let alone come up with an antidote, or even a prophylactic. All we can do is figure out what it is and develop a way to screen for it, so we can remove the uninfected from immediate danger. Then we quarantine the infected, even if they're asymptomatic, and hope that the Yorktown is already on her way. If she gets here in time, maybe we can come up with a solution."

Unspoken is the thought that if all the resources of the Yorktown's medical labs aren't enough, the infected are going to die bloody, horrific deaths at each other's hands; insane and psychotic, crazed with the kind of homicidal mania that Phil has only seen in zombie movies and Klingon soap operas.

*****

The station's sickbay is small and undersupplied, but in the time it has taken Phil to finish his conversation with the station administrators Chatterjee and her team have reorganized the limited lab equipment available and turned one corner of the room into a reasonable facsimile of an epidemiology research space. Space that is currently unoccupied; Phil finds most of the team in the opposite corner perched on lab stools around a table covered with plates of sandwiches and a carafe of steaming, and surprisingly fragrant, coffee.

"Come and eat boss, we've got the blood samples in the centrifuge and Huang is working on prepping the tissue samples." Pol Tarrant, med-tech extraordinaire and one of Phil's most trusted lab technicians, beckons him over to the table. Waving him off Phil knocks on the glass of the sterile lab and gestures to Huang, asking for a time estimate on the tissue samples. Huang holds up five fingers and Phil nods, pointing to the three-generations-out-of-date analytical apparatus in the other corner of the lab and mouthing _do the set up for me, I'll be there in ten minutes_. 

They are an hour into the tests when Chatterjee finally gets results from the PCR and PMCA tests that are designed to look for irregular genetic material in the blood samples and she swings around on her lab stool with a squeak of triumph "Bingo, we have a winner, Dr. Boyce." 

Phil looks up from the SEM. "Send it to me." And reaches for his padd, thumbing open the image viewer so he can project Chatterjee's file onto the wall. 

The image shows four rounds of PMCA, at each level the characteristic black bands that indicate the presence of mis-folded proteins in the blood sample showing thicker and more numerous.

"Prions?" 

"Prions..." Phil pins the image to the wall and motions to Huang, "Tony, take one of the samples, stain it for prion detection and set it up in the digital microscope for me. "

The prions, tiny fragments of metamorphosed DNA, form a writhing, twisting mass of blue-tinted horror when Phil pulls up the magnified image from the high power digital microscope. Magnified over 100,000 times he can see the little bastards in exquisite detail, and he can see that they're fused to some kind of nano-level mechanical device that seems to be the source of their unexpected ability to defy gravity. 

"Why am I not-fucking-surprised." Phil sits back on his lab stool and rubs a hand across his face. "Fuck, no wonder they didn't filter it out." He pushes back from the lab bench and gestures for Chatterjee to look at the image on his padd. "Take a look at these little bastards."

Prions have been the bane of interstellar exploration since the first sleeper ships headed out into the void in the late 21st century. Lacking any of the typical characteristics of life, save the ability to replicate themselves, they've been found to survive in a host of hostile environments from methane lakes to anaerobic swamps and desiccated salt pans; finding them dormant in the ice-pockets of an asteroid doesn't surprise Phil at all. 

"The structure is prion, but that's hell of a replication rate." Chatterjee frowns at the screen, and they both watch the little fragments of short-chain DNA split and reform with terrifying rapidity.

"Yeah, I noticed that, but we've seen fast replication before in prions, there's a paper in SMSJ from a couple of years ago; the USS Lao Tzu, I think, found a sleeper colony ship floating in the 2902 Yi Xiu system. When they boarded her everyone was dead and the forensics indicated the initial source of infection was prions they'd brought on board from a water harvest on one of the ice worlds in the system. They all died within a few weeks." He shifts uncomfortably on the lab stool and stretches the kinks out of his back, wincing as he remembers the rest of the story. Five of the Lao Tzu's away team had picked up the infection and one had died of a rapid-acting form of spongiform encephalitis before the ship's medical team had found a way to filter the prions out of the bloodstream of the rest. 

"And that nanite shell, that's why they're mobile?" Tony Huang leans in to look over Phil's shoulder and pins a orange digital tag to one of the prions.

"Yeah, I guess; I've never seen anything like this before." The three of them watch as the little flash of fluorescent orange wanders drunkenly across the screen, its movements random, but disconcertingly fast. 

All three of them exchange a glance, and Phil shudders as Huang speculates. "You think that's why we saw that blood crawling _up_ the elevator wall?" 

"Yeah, not sure that's a mental image that's going away anytime soon." Chatterjee rubs her hands up her arms as if she's banishing goose-bumps and Phil knows how she feels, crawling blood is certainly going to rank pretty high on his list of things he'd rather not think about for a long damn time. 

For a moment Huang looks nauseated, and then he speculates again. "Does this mean it doesn't need a vector?" He gestures, the fingers of one fine-boned hand spread wide. "I mean, the blood is moving just because the prions are in the plasma, it's not that the prions need the blood as a transmission vector, they're self-propelled."

The thought had also occurred to Phil. "Yeah, I think that's what we're dealing with, but..." And there's just the slightest glimmer of hope in this thought. "...we know they're not airborne, I think they need liquid to move. They may not need to be carried in the blood, but look..." He pauses again and brings up a 50,000 power magnification of a treated sample. "..the nanites have cilia, not wings, not legs; they have to swim."

"Can we dry them out, deny them a way to move around?" Chatterjee looks at him with hope in her normally-cheerful round face and Phil hates that he has to kill that optimism, but he shakes his head. "I don't see how; we can't desiccate human hosts, not without killing them. Until we can filter these things out of whatever liquid they are in we're stuck with trying to contain the infection."

"Transporters? When the Yorktown gets here?"

"No, no fucking way; d'you know how long it takes to come up with a new bio-filter for the transporters? At best, weeks." Tarrant has been listening in on the fringe of the conversation and his curly dark hair bounces as he shakes his head in protest. "No-one who is infected is transporting off this station." He pauses as if he thinks he's over stepped his authority, but Phil nods along with him. "Listen to the man; no-one gets off this rock unless we know that they are 100% clean."

"So, regardless of what we do now, we're going to be leaving people behind?" Silas and Suarez are now part of the conversation and Lilo Suarez, only weeks out of Starfleet Medical's med-tech training program looks at Phil with a kind of fascinated disbelief. Still young and naive enough to believe that the 'fleet can save everyone. 

He shrugs and his voice is low and resigned as he explains. "It's cold I know, but right now we can't even think about evacuating anyone who's infected. That's the _isolate_ part of _isolate and evacuate_." 

"Better make sure we don't get infected then." Tarrant grins with the bravado of someone who has seen almost a decade of away missions; seasoned by fire and disaster and pandemic, even if he is worried, he's not going to show it and Phil appreciates the confidence.

"Damn straight, any of you gets infected I'll kill you myself." It's supposed to be a joke, the kind of hyperbole that away teams use to reinforce their illusion of immortality. But in the silence that follows no one is laughing, and for just a moment Phil remembers that he's only been the boss for a couple of months and, as comfortable as they all are working together, he hasn't yet earned the trust that lies behind that kind of gallows humor. 

"I need more coffee." Chatterjee breaks the uncomfortable tension and reaches out for Phil's mug. "I'll get you some more, boss."

"Banat, thanks." Phil straightens up and shakes off the awkwardness of the moment, refocusing their attention on the task at hand. "Okay plan of action, everyone. It's going to take weeks of analysis even to sequence this thing, never mind decoupling the nanites. For now all we can do is isolate and evacuate." He stands and stretches out the stiffness in his shoulders. "Huang, get the infectious signature added to the tricorders so we can scan for this. Everyone else, ten minutes; take a break, eat, recaffinate and then we need to brainstorm the most effective I and E protocol we have ever operationalized."

As they disperse Phil is left alone with his thoughts and with a groan he slides back up onto the lab stool, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the lab bench, pressing his fingertips against the twin points of searing pressure at his temples. _Jesus-fucking-christ_ prions, and prions with some kind of nano-tech assist which suggests that they have, perhaps, been weaponized. God alone knows how, or by who, but that's largely irrelevant, prions in any form are a bastard. Nine times out of ten they create some horrific brain-melting disease that reduces humans and most other humanoids species, to catatonic shells in weeks, if not days. 

Worse, despite the prevalence of prions in the known universe, and the harrowing effects of prion infections, it's one of the few areas of epidemiology in which there have been only limited advances in the last few centuries. Resistant to heat and most kinds of radiation, and able to survive in the most hostile of physical environments, prions are vulnerable only to a few acids and only at concentrations high enough to be fatal to any organic subject. That these ones seem to be coupled to self-replicating nanites, rendering them almost predatorily mobile, just makes them that much harder to mitigate.

For a brief moment he pauses to wonder what kind of psychopath would consider weaponizing prions. Five hundred years after first discovering scrapie -- sheep-borne spongiform encephalitis -- humans are still contending with CJD and vCJD; kuru and Samson's wasting disease; PrP16 and -- Phil's personal favorite -- FFI, Fatal Familial Insomnia that kills by denying the infected person sleep until they go insane and finally fall into an inevitably fatal, coma. Prions are, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucking nightmare and the thought of these, made mobile by some evil fucker out there in the universe gifts Phil with a moment of deep paralyzing terror. Rendering him breathless with fear at the thought of these microscopic horrors swimming in the blood of the bright, brave young crew of the Yorktown; of them swimming in Chris's blood, spattered on the walls of his ship, spilling from his broken body in a filigree of creeping crimson threads; at the thought of the people he is coming to know as family driven to mayhem and murder by the homicidal insanity carried in these tiny, swarming creatures. 

*****

 

Ignoring his first instinct to cut the mining station personnel out of any aspect of the planning, Phil invites Security Chief Campbell to join the strategy session, aware that her knowledge of the station's logistics and liveware could prove invaluable. And when they, along with Chatterjee and Gauteng, have the rudiments of a plan sketched out they gather the I and E team in the administration mess hall on Alpha Level Two; all the Yorktown personnel, together with the remainder of the station's medical and security teams. 

Armed with yet another mug of coffee -- at this point an IV might have been more efficient -- Phil perches himself on the edge of a mess table and sets out the protocol. "The plan is to incapacitate anyone who isn't symptomatic then scan them for infection. If they're clean we bring them up to Beta Level One, quarantine them there and hold them until the Yorktown gets here. Then we'll have state of the art decontamination equipment and we can evacuate."

"How do we incapacitate everyone?" This from Kiko Harris, Gauteng's young -- very young -- second in command and Phil frowns at the interruption; he hadn't finished.

"There's fentanyl in your pharmacy, right?" Phil addresses the young med tech who'd first met them three hours before and she nods "Plenty, we use it when someone's injured at the rock face and we need an instant systemic anesthetic." 

Aware that he's being rude, and not caring, Phil cuts her off with a wave of his hand, they don't have time for extraneous details, and then continues with his explanation. "We can aerosolize it and pump it in through the air circulation system. We can't do it for long, people will start dying from respiratory suppression if they're down for too long, but if we can get a couple of hours of inactivity then we can go down and screen for anyone who's not infected and pull them out of there. If anyone has questions or suggestions, now would be the time." He looks pointedly at Harris who slouches back against the wall looking slightly sullen, and then scans the rest of the faces, all pensive, all thinking, silent until Huang asks, "What do we tell anyone who's asymptomatic?"

Phil exchanges a glance with Gauteng, and they both shrug before she responds. "We don't tell them anything, they'll be unconscious. It's our job..." and she indicates the security team with a quick sweep of her hand, "...to make sure they're safely contained, so when they wake up they aren't a danger to themselves, or anyone else." 

"They're not going to be happy once they figure out that we're not evacuating them."

"No shit, but with luck we'll be done with the evacuation before the fentanyl wears off." 

It's cold as fuck, a plan that leaves the infected to die on the station, but Starfleet protocols are clear as crystal in these types of cases; quarantine and contain; sacrifice those that are beyond hope to save those that have a chance. 

"Any one got anything else useful to say?" The silence is deep and slightly uncomfortable and Phil uses the brief respite to swallow a little more of his coffee before laying the mug carefully to one side and fidgeting with his tricorder, trying to put off the next inevitable and difficult stage of the process. 

He surveys his team for a long moment, like everyone else below command grade on the Yorktown, they are frighteningly young. With the exception of the forty-three year old Gauteng, Chatterjee is the most experienced, a second-tour Chief Petty Officer, and even she can't be more than thirty-two; the rest of them are in their twenties, early twenties for Suarez and Silas both of whom have joined the Yorktown direct from Starfleet Medical's tech training program within the last two months. 

The thought of putting any of them in harm's way is one of the hardest parts of the job for Phil; he has a mental count of how many young people have died as a result of his direct orders, and for every single one of them he remembers the name and date and circumstance of their deaths. But nothing compares to the peril he's about to inflict on this team; from the fast clean death of a combat medic under fire, to the resigned dignity of a corpsman left behind on a burning patrol ship Phil's seen the face of death, but his stomach twists at the thought of ordering anyone down into the seventh circle of hell that has become manifest on the two dormitory decks below them.

"Okay, before I order anyone down there I'm going to give you a chance to volunteer. We've got back up, two marines each." And Phil nods at Gauteng and her red-shirted security personnel, aware that he can't give _them_ the courtesy of volunteering. "I'm going and I need two of you to come with me; anyone who stays behind, gets to work on the analysis. The more we know about the mechanics of these things the better."

That all five of his support medics step forward to volunteer makes Phil grin with a wry, slightly frustrated pride. "Well, fuck you all, you're going to make me choose aren't you?"

"We could always draw straws." Chatterjee comes to his rescue.

"Yeah, why don't you do that." It's an acknowledgment of just how dangerous these next few hours could be, Phil has absolutely no desire to be responsible for anyone's fate, leaving it to chance might be the coward's way out, but on a day when he's about to put his own life on the line, he only has so much courage to spare. 

As the team are conducting their lottery Phil confers with Campbell who shakes her head in futility as she confesses. "We have no idea how many are in the active-violent stage of infection anymore; we've lost all surveillance in Beta Level Three and most of the recorders are out on Two. A handful of groups that aren't symptomatic are checking in periodically, they've all made it up to Two, so don't even think about going down below. There's a report of a lot of bodies in the main rec hall on Three and someone is trying to get into the cargo elevator. We've shut down everything except the lifts at this end of the mess halls, nothing else is going to move unless they force open the blast shields and hand-crank the elevators up and down."

"They can't get to the shuttle bay." As terrified as he should be about his own fate, it's the possibility of this disease getting off the station that is making Phil's palms clammy, his heart beating too fast at the thought of how fast this could spread if it made it to the trade lanes. 

"They won't." And she pauses, her eyes bleak but determined. "We can send a security team down to hold them off if we have to." It would be a death sentence and Phil's pretty sure that she means to be on the front lines if it comes to a confrontation, but he's not about to try to dissuade her. They're all going to be faced with making sacrifices in the next few hours. 

Behind him there's a brief chuff of ironic laughter. "Okay...I don't come back...Suarez you do _not_ get my null-G rig." Tarrant has pulled one of the short straws.

Silas makes up the third of their team, young and fast and outstandingly competent, she and Tarrant exemplify the best of Starfleet's medical away teams. Phil pauses as he hands each of them a recalibrated tricorder, his gaze steady, trying to impart a confidence he doesn't really feel; if he was a betting man Phil would be willing to lay down real folding money on the odds of at least one of them not making it back.

"Okay, once everyone's down we'll each take a sector, clear it room by room. When you find someone who is infected leave them there, remove anyone who isn't and then seal the room. Bring all the uninfected bodies to this area here." There's a huge schematic of the station projected up on the wall of the mess hall and Phil indicates a large open area by the main elevators on Beta Two, "..and then these guys..." he gestures to the four unfortunate volunteers from the administrative staff, "...will come down and move them into the recreation area on Beta One."

"Banat; you, Suarez and Huang are our back up teams. Anything happens to one of our teams, we'll need one of you to come in and replace us. Meanwhile, keep working on a protocol to contain this thing." Phil takes one last draw from his coffee and slides the mug across the mess table before he puts a hand on Tarrant's shoulder "Pol.." And nods at Silas "...Jane, we have fifteen minutes while they pump the knockout gas into the lower levels. It's probably not going to incapacitate anyone who's already symptomatic, so it's not going to make this any safer for us, it's just going to make it easier to screen the rest. So, if you've got gods, go make your peace with them."

*****

"I need your office." Phil isn't really in the mood for pleasantries and he leans on the door of Forrest's office and indicates with an unmistakable gesture for the man to get out of his chair and leave the room. "I need to talk to the Yorktown, give me five minutes." For a moment it looks as if Forrest is going to argue with him, not used to being peremptorily ordered out of his own office. But, whether it's the stripes on his arm or the look on his face, something about Phil makes the station administrative chief think twice and, with a grunt of wordless ill-temper, he pushes himself away from the desk and shoulders past Phil muttering. 

"Five minutes."

Chris answers his comm almost immediately, stalling Phil with an upraised hand. "Give me a moment..." and over the open channel Phil can hear as Chris excuses himself from the bridge. In his ready room he transfers the call to the wall system and Phil manages a tired, wry smile at the sight of him, anxious and clearly exhausted.

"See, I was right about that asshole administrator."

"Yeah, but in fairness even he didn't really know how bad it was when he first called us in. I'm pretty sure he thought at that point we could fix this with a couple of hyposprays and a vitamin supplement. Things only got really ugly after we were on our way. What's your ETA?" Phil tries to sit straight and square his shoulders, minimizing his own fatigue to bolster Chris's confidence. 

"A little under two hours, we're pouring on the coal, and Cate's camped out in the engine room making sure the warp drive holds together; we'll be there as soon as we can." 

Two hours is far better than Phil had been hoping for, and he can't begin to imagine what it's doing to the Yorktown's engines, already a couple of months past her scheduled semi-annual refit. He's going to owe the Yorktown's Chief Engineer a bottle of very fine tequila when this is all over. "Well by then we should have cleared the lower decks ready for evac."

"Can't you just wait for us to show up with the cavalry?" There's real fear in Chris's voice, although he seems to be doing a masterful job at controlling his obvious desire to just order Phil to stand down and wait for the Yorktown to get there.

"These are civilians, Chris, we can't just leave them down there. When someone goes symptomatic they go berserk and it's carnage if they come across anyone else. One of them took a fire axe to three guys who were trying to get out in one of the mine shaft drop-lifts. You don't want to see what was left when he was done." Phil pauses for a second and then offers. "Chatterjee is sending all the data we have so far to Saxena, we need the infectious disease team working on a decontamination protocol as soon as possible. If you want to see what this thing does, you can get her to send you up copies of the surveillance footage." He really would rather Chris didn't access the material, it'll just add to his stress for the next few hours, but he holds his tongue; maybe if Chris sees for himself how bad it is he'll be more likely to actually consider carrying out General Order 35 if it all goes to hell.

Chris winces and nods, his voice reluctant as he acknowledges Phil's concern. "Okay, promise me you'll be careful." 

"I've got two big burly red shirts with me, they'll watch my back." He's not at all sure he sounds convincing, and Chris tilts his head, frowning, his eyes dark and skeptical with doubt. Phil sighs, mustering a flimsy smile and a moment of forced optimism. "I'll be fine, Chris. I'll be fine." And then the smile falters and dies at the thought that this might be the last time he sees Chris's face and in a rare display of open emotion Phil kisses two fingers and touches them to the screen, hesitating until his voice steadies before he manages another faint smile and a gruff whisper. "Hell, I only just got you to admit that you love me, I'm not about to leave you now, darling boy."

Chris blinks hard and returns the smile, albeit with a wry twist, and his voice is just as rough as he orders. "Don't even think about it. I love you, okay?" His voice fades out on the last syllable, his guard down for just a second, and Phil's heart aches at the fear and worry in his eyes. 

"Love you too. See you in a few hours."

*****

The lift-cage smells of death; the thick stench of blood and shit and fear and the entire team is very quiet as the grimy metal box lurches once and starts to descend. When it jolts to a hard stop after a few seconds Gauteng motions her team to cover the doors as she prepares to key in the access code and Phil can feel the tension crackling in the air. The doors shudder twice before they slowly pull apart to reveal the echoing empty space of the Beta Level Two mess hall. Deserted and silent, but well-lit and apparently undamaged, the only indication of their current predicament is a bloody smear that starts half way though the room and disappears under the far doors. Phil looks down at the makeshift biohazard kit they've cobbled together from station supplies, lightweight EVA suit, engineering tape and surgical gloves and hopes to a god he doesn't believe in, that it's enough to keep them safe.

One hundred and four minutes into the mission, with almost ninety-five percent of Beta Level Two cleared, the lights go out and if this whole thing wasn't already creepy as fuck, the sudden darkness drags Phil perilously close to a moment of screaming panic. The dark doesn't normally bother him, but as he and his security team ease around one last corner Phil has a sudden sick sensation that they are going to die somewhere in this last forty meters. Behind anyone of the six bunk room doors that separate them from the distant recreation center and the elevators that will lift them to safety, lurks death and disease, and the inky darkness alleviated only by the erratic flicker of broken emergency lights, only serves to make the threat that much more unpredictable.

Pausing for a moment before they brave the next round of dark and silent bunk rooms, Phil leans against the bulkhead and then his heart skips a beat as a faint buzz rattles against the metal behind him. It's his communicator, set to vibrate and he pulls it out to find Chris's call signal flashing at him. Thumbing the channel open, Phil silently waves at Silas to continue into the corridor, "Start clearing the first room. I'll be there directly."

"Are you here?" Phil keeps his voice low, and taking the hint, Chris's response is equally muted. 

"Standing off half a klick; ready for evacuation, we're using the lower cargo bay as a reception center."

"Good, get everyone off fast as you can. Once the fentanyl wears off we're going to have some very unhappy miners on our hands down here." 

"You already do, Arden is tracking at lest three unidentified groups on the lower levels and one on Beta Two with you."

So that's why the lights are out. "Okay, any of those groups look like they're going to make it to the shuttle bay, you need to destroy this station."

"Not until you're clear. How long?"

Further down the corridor Phil can see Resznik and Chen, their shoulder mounted lights bobbing in the dark and Chen waves an all clear at the first door, no one to evacuate, five more rooms to go. "About five minutes. Are the other teams done?"

"We've already started the evacuation. It's going to take us five or six minutes to evacuate everyone from the admin levels."

"Okay, just queue us up with the rest, we'll be done by the time you're ready to take us off. But Chris, if there is any chance of those rogue groups getting to the shuttle bay you need to blow the station. There's at least one warp-capable transport ship down there. If the infection gets off the station there's no telling how far it could spread." 

"They get anything space-borne we can blow them out of the sky before they get out of the system." There's a stubborn determination in Chris's voice and as much as Phil appreciates the sentiment, fucking this up could kill millions not to mention what violating General Order 35 would do to Chris's career. He says as much and gets a predictable response. 

"Captain's discretion"

"Fuck captain's discretion." Down the corridor Resznik is waving at him, holding up two fingers and, even as he continues the conversation with Chris, Phil scans and clears two more unconscious miners attaching tiny transport recognition patches on their foreheads; now that the Yorktown is here they can transport out directly. "I'm serious, Chris. If there is any chance of these guys getting out you need to blow this entire facility now, you cannot wait."

"I know, fuck I know." Determination has shifted, subtly, to desperation and Phil can feel Chris's pain, buried deep as it is under his calm captain's facade. And then their conversation is intercepted by the voice of the Yorktown's sensor chief.

"Captain, we've got movement in the elevator shafts. It's slow, they must be climbing the maintenance ladders."

"How long?" Phil motions Chen to check the next door, and after a moment Resznik signals that it's empty and they move on again.

"Minutes, sir. Less than that if they are armed." Joe Arden is the best sensor tech on the Yorktown and Phil appreciates that he's the one tracking all the potential hostiles. 

"You heard that?"

"Yeah, yeah..." Phil follows Chen into the second to last room, "...two more rooms to clear."

"You don't have time." Chris's voice is still remarkably calm, but Phil knows him well enough to hear the underlying strain.

"Okay, keep the channel open and let us know what's happening, but for now I have a job to do." Phil scans yet another prone victim, his heart in his mouth as the tricorder flickers over the body of the young miner before it settles and shows a bloodstream and spinal fluid free of infection. With a single swift tap he secures a transporter patch to the boy's forehead and orders, "Another one to beam out." 

And then his concentration is broken by the eldritch shriek of tearing metal somewhere entirely too close and his communicator comes alive with a squeal. "Commander, you need to get out of there, they got the freight elevator moving, there's at least three of them on their way up from Beta."

"Gauteng? I thought you were already evacuated."

"Not without you and your team; I'm at the end of the corridor, in the recreation room, get down here and we can seal the doors until we get beam out."

"I'm on my way; Chen, Resznik with me." And even as he's sliding his tricorder back into his utility belt he can hear the sickening crunch of flesh on metal as something pounds against the sealed security doors at the other end of the corridor. 

Gauteng, breaks in again, her orders urgent despite the steady confidence in her tone. "Doc, get moving, they're almost through the doors, you need to haul ass."

Leaving Resznik to seal the room they've just vacated, protecting the two uninfected bodies until they can be transported out, Phil barrels down the corridor and through the doors to the recreation area, Chen hot on his heels. Gauteng and Jakowski are waiting, ready to seal the doors.

"Wait for Resznik." His heart pounding, Phil bars the door with his arm, the three of them watching as five bloody, naked figures round the end of the corridor and advance on the fleeing marine. 

"Master Sergeant, get them out of there." It's Chris, on Gauteng's comm channel.

"Sorry sir, still got one stray..." and her voice trails off, the three of them watching in horror as Resznik is brought down by a flying tackle; overwhelmed in an instant, his scream of terror cut off in a bloody gurgle, a spray of blood arcing out to splatter against the dirty gray bulkhead. 

"Now, Gauteng; prepare to beam out." Chris's voice is still calm, but he's using his I-am-the-captain-and-you-will-follow-my-orders tone, and Phil can see the conflict in Gauteng's eyes as she bars the door, motioning Chen to fuse the mechanism with a blast from her phaser-rifle. He waves her to silence and takes over the conversation. 

"Respectfully Captain; we haven't screened each other. No one is beaming off this rock until I know they're not carrying this damned infection." Respectful is about the last thing he's feeling, but after all the shit Phil's put Chris through about staying professional, the least he can do is reciprocate. 

"No time, Doctor, prepare for transport. Yorktown out." And even as the communicator channel goes dead, the moment of silence is broken by the low whine of a transporter beam. Then the whole station shudders and even as he's fracturing into a billion atoms Phil recognizes the impact detonation of photon torpedoes. 

Awareness returns in a rush, his voice raised in a shout of angry protest, until Phil realizes that he's not on the Yorktown and he stumbles off the single pad of a shuttle transporter bay. He barely has time to get out of the way before Gauteng staggers off behind him. They both fall to the floor, breathless and shaking and then the lights shimmer and Chen appears, still pale as a ghost. 

Phil pushes himself to his knees and then abandons the attempt to stand, sagging back against the bulkhead. Tempted to throw up, he curses instead, "Fuck, what just happened?"

"You're on the shuttle, sir." Ensign Ravi Esawaran leans into the passenger cabin his brown eyes wide and alive with the excitement of the moment. 

"Esawaran?" Beyond him, through the forward view shield Phil can make out a brief flash of fire as part of the station explodes, vented air and fuel flaring bright and then extinguishing in the merciless vacuum, and he tries not to think about how many lives are being extinguished along with it. 

"Sir, yes sir. Just as well I was still standing off wasn't it?"

Brought back to the moment by Esawaran's entirely too jaunty demeanor Phil leans forward, slowly getting to his feet, and growls. "Yeah, it was, now get your ass back in that cabin until I know we're not carrying anything infectious." 

Esawaran does as he's told and when Phil looks across to the transporter pad he takes a sharp hard, breath. Chen is on the floor, Jakowski sprawled across her legs, both of them streaked crimson, damp, dark patches on their EVA suits, and a spreading pool of blood on the deck attesting to significant blood-loss on someone's part.

As much as he wants to help, Phil instinctively scoots back against the bulkhead, his voice harsh with fear as he asks, "Who's is it?"

Jakowski groans and rolls onto his back, one hand held up high, his EVA suit ripped from wrist to elbow, blood dripping from his fingers. "Mine _fuck_ , one of those fuckers had a bolt gun, got me right as we slammed the door." He pushes himself away from Chen, and when Gauteng goes to grab her collar to pull her out of the blood slick on the deck, Phil snaps out "No, don't touch either of them." 

Gauteng backs up and, ignoring the insistent buzz of his communicator, Phil wrestles his tricorder out of the back of his utility belt. "Just give me a moment."

His communicator buzzes again; _goddammit_ Chris is a persistent bastard, it's a useful trait in a Starship captain, but annoying as fuck in a partner. "Esawaran, call the captain, let him know we're here and I'll be with him as soon as I know we haven't brought anything on board that we shouldn't have."

It only takes a few seconds. "Nothing, you're clear. Chen, you next."

*****

The adrenaline crash is fast and brutal and Phil leans on the wall of the shower for a long time, too tired to move as the water pours down, scalding and purifying, cleansing him of the horrors of the past twenty four hours. Intellectually he knows that there's no residual contamination anywhere on his body. Between the bio-filters in the transporter system, the high level radiation wash and the skin-stripping acid shower, the chances of any prion contamination making it through to the Yorktown are vanishingly slim. But still he shudders, his stomach rolling in protest; the thought of this crew -- this group of people that he's only known for a couple of months, but that are fast becoming his family -- experiencing the horror that was BNC334 is enough to make him lean over and retch onto the floor of the shower. He hasn't eaten in half a day and with nothing to bring up his stomach cramps and twists until he braces himself against the wall and manages a couple of deep breaths before he turns his face back up to the water.

Wrapped in a towel he expects to be alone when he emerges from the head, but Chris is sitting on the edge of the bunk, toeing off his boots even as he's pulling his command golds over his head. Phil had left him in his ready room, debriefing Gauteng, with several hours of writing mission reports and next-of-kin letters ahead of him. 

"That was fast." Drying his hair, he comes around to stand in front of Chris, frowning at the tension radiating from him, the creased lines of exhaustion in his face and the tired slope of his usually square shoulders. As rough as the last few days have been for Phil, they haven't exactly been a picnic for Chris. 

"I took care of the next-of-kins but I only sent Command a preliminary report." Chris pauses as his black undershirt follows the gold onto the floor and Phil has to stop himself from rolling his eyes; it's taking him a while to get used to living with someone who thinks picking things up off floor once a day constitutes good housekeeping. But the irritation is fleeting as Chris stretches and flops back onto the mattress before continuing. "The shit's going to hit the fan when BN&C finds out that I blew up their mining station. This report is going to have to cover my ass, your ass and the collective ass of Starfleet or legal's going to be trying to wiggle out of a substantial compensation claim." He yawns and rolls his shoulders. "I'm too fucking tired to deal with that shit right now. Castiglione will cover for us for a day or so."

"Yeah, I could hear Forrest protesting all the way at the other end of the cargo bay." Sitting on the edge of the bunk Phil allows himself to be distracted by the length of leanly muscled torso laid out on the mattress in front of him and he lays a hand flat on the warm, lightly furred skin of Chris's abdomen, the muscles firm under his touch. "He was yelling something about 8.9 billion?" The muscles twitch and Phil rubs gently, nails scratching lightly through the trail of dark blond hair that disappears into black uniform pants. 

"Fuck if I know, but that's probably about right, that's about as much as a new Q-class patrol ship." He stretches again, sucking in his belly and Phil takes advantage, sliding his fingers into the warm, space beneath his waistband, seeking out the damp heat of a still quiescent cock. 

Chris groans at the first touch and, his voice incredulous, asks. "Aren't you wiped out?"

"Yeah..." Phil curls his fingers around the thick length and...oh fuck, it feels good... and he can't quite believe he's contemplating sex when he's this tired, but suddenly it's the only thing he can think about and his own cock twitches hard beneath his towel. "...blame that whole "nearly fucking died today" thing. But I really want you to fuck me right now."

In a heartbeat the exhaustion is gone from Chris's frame and he pushes himself up on his elbows, his eyes sharp and hungry. "Gotta shower, you stay here...I'll be right back." 

He sheds pants and underwear in a single smooth slide as he gets up from the bed and Phil takes his place, lying back and appreciating the sight of Chris' naked ass as he disappears through the door of the head. 

*****

Phil wakes in the dark, disoriented and groggy, aware only of the smooth warmth of Chris's back under his hand and the quiet whisper of his breathing and...oh fuck...he fell asleep before Chris got back from the shower. With a sigh he shifts up closer to Chris's solid heat and slides an arm round his waist, hand once more coming to rest on the flat planes of his abdomen; if he doesn't let his mind wake up too much maybe he can drift back off to sleep for a few more hours and, with a frustrated sigh, Phil burrows back into his pillow.

Then the body in his arms shifts and stretches and a hand covers his, tugging insistently until their twined fingers settle over the thick, firm heat of a well-firmed cock; apparently Chris is also awake.

"You fell asleep on me." Low and rough with sleep there's still a tease in Chris's voice and, as embarrassed as he his, Phil snorts a laugh in response. 

"Yeah, sorry about that." He groans as Chris presses back against him, the smooth muscular curve of his ass a vicious tease against his cock. "Damn, Chris." Phil buries his face in the back of Chris's neck, breathing him in, the clean musk of him sending a sharp, sweet familiar thrill sparking up his spine. 

"So how awake are you?" It comes out as a quiet growl even as Chris tightens their joined fingers around his cock and strokes slowly up the full length, until Phil takes the initiative and rubs his thumb over the damp, slick tip. 

"Awake enough for fucking." He presses closer, his own cock aching and full as it settles in the cleft of Chris's ass, and for a brief moment he entertains the idea of just rolling Chris under and sinking himself deep into the exquisitely tight heat of his body. 

Then the broad muscles flex and tense and with a firm shove he finds himself on his back as Chris twists and comes to rest over him, all of his firmly muscled weight pressing Phil down into the mattress. "Thank fuck, because I really need to be in you right now." There's an undertone of something subtle and unnamable in Chris's voice, a hint of fear, a whisper of possessive relief; a suggestion that he needs to claim Phil, returned to him, whole and undefiled. 

"Right now?"

"Right this fucking minute." 

No foreplay then. 

And that's just fine, he's still far too fucking tired for details. All he wants is the mindless pleasure of a good hard fuck. The feel of Chris moving deep within him, strong and fast and relentless; the power of his body, the smell and taste of him, in this moment enough to drive out all the horror of BN&C 334, all the terror of the past few days. 

Chris pushes away, ordering the lights to twenty percent, his smile and the wolfish shine in his eyes promising everything that Phil wants, everything that will make him whole and healed; and isn't that the fucking miracle of it, that for the first time in his life there is someone who knows him inside and out, knows him bone and flesh and soul and is ready, eager, to give him what he needs. With another grin, Chris leans to the side, one hand searching over the side of the bed, the snick and slide of the bunk storage locker betraying that he's gone in search of lube. Stretching back against the sheets, his heart stuttering in his chest, Phil draws a long, sighing breath as he relaxes into the mattress and holds Chris's gaze, his eyes gone to pale blue-gray in the low light, his muscles flexing as he ruts slowly in the cradle of Phil's hips. 

"How do you want this?" 

Phil catches the whispering slide of lube on flesh and then Chris's hand is on his thigh and he takes the hint, wrapping the leg up and over Chris's waist opening himself to the searching touch of eager, knowing fingers. 

"Fast, relentless, powerful, just the way you like it." He pauses, the truth of his own need reflected in Chris's eyes. "Just the way I like..." the sentence dies in a deep, rough moan as Chris pushes deep with his cock and not the fingers Phil was expecting. Being fucked without prep burns; as much as Phil loves it, as much as the feel of Chris fucking him open goes deep to his soul, it hurts, in a glorious, searing stretch as Chris sinks all the way in one slow, endless slide.

"Fuck..." he draws out the single syllable in a soft groan, arching his hips so that the last centimeter drags across his prostate and now the pain twines tight with layers of pleasure that arc through his body, searing his nerves and fuck if this isn't _exactly_ what he needs. 

"Good?" Voice rough, tight with control as he holds himself motionless, Chris leans in until his forehead is resting on Phil's and they're breathing each other's air, panting fast and shallow as Phil struggles for a word adequate to describe this glorious, aching, razor's edge of wanton pleasure. "Exquisite..." it comes out in a fast breath, even as Phil reaches up and wraps his fingers around the nape of Chris' neck, pulling him into a long, slick, wet kiss.

Conversation over, all their concentration now is reserved for fucking; wrapped tight around each other, Phil's ankles locked around Chris's back as they move in a powerful rolling flow of thrust and withdrawal. Chris pulling all the way out, only to punch back in fast and hard, again and again, until Phil is strung tight on the edge of orgasm and he tightens down with his heels and holds Chris in place. 

"Enough?" Chris is panting into the side of Phil's neck, scraping his teeth lightly along the tendon in between leaving hot wet little suckled bruises. "You need to come?"

"Fuck yes, please..." and anything else he might have said is cut off in a whine as Chris slides a hand between their bodies and wraps his fingers, long and slippery, around Phil's cock. And the sense of being alive -- gloriously, vibrantly, alive -- is so suddenly, sweetly, intense that it takes only a few moments before Phil is coming in long, aching spurts that spatter up his belly and ease the slide of their bodies. He sobs a breath, soft and barely coherent, "Christopher..." and feels Chris shudder in response.

"Need you...fuck...don't leave me...don't..." and Chris's voice breaks on the next word "...never..." trailing off on a hushed and broken whimper.

"Never..." Phil whispers it against a damp temple, a promise that he has no right to make, a promise that neither of them could keep if orders and circumstances were to conspire against them, But as he wraps Chris tight, he repeats it. "Never..." and his reward is a fractured whisper of devotion "...love you...'" as Chris flexes his body, in a hard, sharp thrust, burying himself one last time before he breathes a voiceless moan against Phil's neck and, muscles locked in a shivering spasm, he comes hard, shaking until he collapses, his entire weight crushing Phil into the sheets. 

Recovery is long and slow and it's only when Phil is getting short of breath that he nudges Chris to the side and leans up on one elbow to stroke his fingers lightly through the thick, damp curls on his chest. "You did good today, you know that, yes?"

Half asleep, Chris opens one eye, a faint smile curving the side of his mouth. "I guess...you're still alive, that's all I care about at this precise moment." 

"Me and two hundred and eighty-four other people. You did _damn_ good, my darling boy." Dipping his head Phil brushes a kiss across Chris's forehead and finds himself pulled close as Chris slides a hand over his shoulder and tugs him down. Wrapped close, he shivers as Chris whispers, his voice stark and desolate. "I thought I was going to have to blow that station with you still on it." 

"I know." Phil tightens his hold. "I know, but you found a way out." And he nuzzles into the curve of Chris's neck, gentle in his pragmatism as he carries on, "...and if you hadn't, you'd have done your duty; you'd have protected your crew and stopped this horror spreading into the rest of the galaxy. Like I said, you did good." 

Chris hums a quiet sigh and rubs one hand slowly up and down Phil's spine, fingers spread across the skin, kneading gently. "So we're going to be okay?"

"We're going to be okay." His mouth is up against Chris's jaw, the faint burn of stubble sending renewed sparks of heat all the way to his groin and he groans quietly. He's is way, way too damn tired for another round. "We're going to be more than okay, now go the fuck back to sleep."


End file.
